Spacecraft trajectories to the LSubscript3/Subs

Authors: Marco Tantardini Elena Fantino Yuan Ren Pierpaolo Pergola Gerard Gómez Josep J Masdemont

Publish Date: 2010/07/30

Volume: 108, Issue: 3, Pages: 215-232

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Abstract

Of the three collinear libration points of the Sun–Earth Circular Restricted ThreeBody Problem CR3BP L3 is that located opposite to the Earth with respect to the Sun and approximately at the same heliocentric distance Whereas several space missions have been launched to the other two collinear equilibrium points ie L1 and L2 taking advantage of their dynamical and geometrical characteristics the region around L3 is so far unexploited This is essentially due to the severe communication limitations caused by the distant and permanent opposition to the Earth and by the gravitational perturbations mainly induced by Jupiter and the close passages of Venus whose effects are more important than those due to the Earth However the adoption of a suitable periodic orbit around L3 to ensure the necessary communication links with the Earth or the connection with one or more relay satellites located at L4 or L5 and the simultaneous design of an appropriate station keepingstrategy would make it possible to perform valuable fundamental physics and astrophysics investigations from this location Such an opportunity leads to the need of studying the ways to transfer a spacecraft s/c from the Earth’s vicinity to L3 In this contribution we investigate several trajectory design methods to accomplish such a transfer ie various types of twoburn impulsive trajectories in a Suns/c twobody model a patched conics strategy exploiting the gravity assist of the nearby planets an approach based on traveling on invariant manifolds of periodic orbits in the Sun–Earth CR3BP and finally a lowthrust transfer We examine advantages and drawbacks and we estimate the propellant budget and time of flight requirements of each

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